ZENS: galaxies in groups along the cosmic web. I.

ZENS adopts novel approaches, described here, to quantify four different galactic environments, namely: (1) the mass of the host group halo; (2) the projected halo-centric distance; (3) the rank of galaxies as central or satellites within their group halos; and (4) the filamentary large-scale structure density.

No self-consistent identification of a central galaxy is found in ~40% of <10^13.5^M_{sun}_ groups, from which we estimate that ~15% of groups at these masses are dynamically unrelaxed systems. Central galaxies in relaxed and unrelaxed groups generally have similar properties, suggesting that centrals are regulated by their mass and not by their environment. Centrals in relaxed groups have, however, ~30% larger sizes than in unrelaxed groups, possibly due to accretion of small satellites in virialized group halos.